Ciena upgrades Blue Planet SDN/NFV orchestration platform

Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) has announced enhancements to the Blue Planet software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) orchestration platform it acquired when it bought Cyan (see "Ciena closes Cyan acquisition, begins integration").

The upgrades include:

• A container-based, micro-services architecture designed to enable quicker customization and accelerated development of new applications, including those from third-parties based on open source. The Blue Planet platform loosely couples software functions within these containers to create and enable SDN management and control, NFV orchestration, and multi-domain service orchestration.
• The new architecture also enables disaggregation of the software stack to help providers add their own services, Ciena says.
• New TOSCA-based service templates offer "DevOps" style self-service programmability of resources (physical, virtual, or cross-domain). The feature reduces the need to pay OSS or integration vendors professional services fees, according to the company.
  Support for business process model and notation (BPMN) standard simplifies integration with legacy OSS/BSS systems as well as the ability to create, integrate, and operate new services.
  

Ciena also touted existing attributes of the Blue Planet platform, including support of non-Ciena domains as well as support of open source standards.

The offering drew kudos from Michael Howard, senior research director at market research firm IHS-Infonetics. "Ciena's Blue Planet division is delivering innovation in the network virtualization and service orchestration space," Howard was quoted as saying in a Ciena press release. "Their movement toward micro-services architectures and containers is in tune with leading network operators, who expect that these compelling technologies will help them to transform, virtualize, and differentiate."

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